


The Visit

by soulswimmr



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, DNF, M/M, Season 3 Spoilers, dreamnotfound, dreamwastaken - Freeform, i know george is gonna visit dream soon but here's my tender version of canon, no beta we die like the citizens of lmanberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29349546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulswimmr/pseuds/soulswimmr
Summary: George finally visits Dream in prison. Maybe there's still a remnant left of someone he once called his best friend.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	The Visit

**Author's Note:**

> no beta babeyyyy it's 1 am.
> 
> here's your reminder to not be a weirdo about ships to the content creators

“Remember to walk with the platform. You have five minutes,” Sam’s voice rumbles behind George. Across a sea of lava, the obsidian jail sits unperturbed. From here, George can see the near-barren interior. From here, George can see a familiar figure standing inside, watching. He gulps. George steps out onto the platform, and walks with it.

The air is sweltering amongst all the lava, so intense that George feels lightheaded as he walks. He’s already weakened with mining fatigue- one misstep and he’s gone forever. 

Despite there being moments of near overwhelming heat, he makes it to the cell, breathing an audible sigh of relief as his feet find solid, unmoving ground. He steps inside, watching the bridge travel back without him, and the lava begins to fall from above. The heat is dampered as he’s closed out from the outside world, leaving him alone with Dream. George watches the lava, and waits for his former friend to say something. Anything.

He’s met with silence.

“What?” George says, bordering on teasing, finally turning to face Dream. “Not even a hello?” he stops short as he finally sees the man before him. Or at least, what used to be a man.

Dream is skinny and gaunt, the orange jumpsuit hanging off his body like he’s drowning in it. His dirty blonde hair is grown out, almost touching his shoulders now, and without the smiley mask, George has a good look at a face that, once comforting, is now unrecognizable.

His face is scarred, the way it’s been for a long time, but Dream’s emerald eyes are duller, darker, and lifeless. He’s not frowning as much as he’s just… not emoting. Standing before him isn’t the ambitious adventurer and best friend George had once had. This isn’t even Dream. It’s a stranger wearing Dream’s body.

He just stares at George. There’s no malice, nor sadness. There’s just. Nothing.

“You’re a proper mess,” George blurts out, his voice wavering without him meaning to. He clears his throat. “I mean, Jesus, Dream. Just look at you.”

Dream’s stare falls to the floor. He continues to say nothing. 

“Right. No mirrors here, I guess. Still. Uh, how are you then?”

George would prefer the atmosphere of the lava bridge to the tension in the room he’s in now. Dream shuts him out further, turning his back to George and sitting on the small cot he’s been graced with. In another time, George would crack a joke to get Dream to laugh. He’d be concerned for Dream, sympathize with him, mourn with him for what he’s lost. Instead, George feels a fresh coat of betrayal sap the warmth out of him.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” George chides. “Is that what you’re going to do while I visit? Just give me the silent treatment? Sapnap told me you only spoke to him through a book. Am I going to get that same privilege, or are we just going to sit here like a couple of idiots?”

Dream glances over his shoulder briefly, before slowly getting to his feet and pulling out a leather bound journal with a quill attached. He scribbles something out on it and reaches out, giving George the book without looking in his eyes.

George takes the book and opens to the page Dream wrote on.

_ You took so long. _

His heart cracks in his chest. George clutches the book in his hands, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from showing too much, from showing how it hurts to be here, to be missed.

“Yeah, well— I’ve been busy,” George says, laying the book on the cot. “We’ve all been busy. Rebuilding and such. You kind of left behind a giant crater, so.”

Dream doesn’t pick the book back up. With a sigh, George continues. “Look, I’m sorry it took so long, okay? You know I don’t like to get too involved with stuff. Besides, I have things to do now with Sap and Karl.”

He paces around the room a bit. Dream sits, watching with a blank stare, leaving the book at his side. He hasn’t said a word, yet it feels like he’s asking George to say more, say more, say more. What does he want him to say, anyways?

“Look, Dream. You fucked up,” George says, hardening his voice. “You screwed everyone over, and you suffered the consequences, so stop looking at me like you’re some kicked puppy. You’re sick, you know that?” he runs a hand through his hair. “I mean, I saw your little lair, and that’s  _ fucked up.  _ You deserve to be here!”

George stalks closer until he’s standing directly over Dream, his body casting a shadow onto the man’s hollow face. He’s trembling a little bit, and his fists are clenched, but George wills himself to sit on the cot next to Dream, to get closer. Maybe then, he’ll get through to him.

Focus.

He sighs. “I miss when it was just us, you know? None of this ultimate power shit, just messing around in the forest and making a village. Do you even remember those days?” He thinks of Dream’s smile, of chasing after him with Sapnap at his side. He thinks of the first time Dream called him his king. “Why couldn’t we have just stayed that way?”

Finally, it seems like Dream has heard him. He looks at his hands thoughtfully, and finally pulls out the notebook.

They both stare at the blank page for a long time. Dream draws an “I”, and they both stare some more. Eventually, the quill moves.

_ I’ll get out of this. We can go back to that. _

__

George runs a hand over his face. “Oh you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. No, no we can’t go back, because you’re  _ not  _ escaping, and you’re not going to make up some plot that’s gonna fail and keep you in here until you rot!”

Dream huffs a little bit, angling himself so that his back is to George. This is not how he wants to spend the five minutes he has, with him, but Dream doesn’t seem to be in the mood to cooperate.

“Do you actually want to ‘go back’? Or do you want to escape just so you can make everyone’s life a living hell again?” he pokes and prods, hoping that, if anything, he can get a rise out of Dream. Nostalgia hasn’t worked. Humor hasn’t worked. He’s sitting next to a brick wall.

To his chagrin, Dream reaches for the book and quill, but instead of writing an answer, Dream just stares at the page. And he stares. And he stares. The minutes tick down.

A fury, white and hot, possesses George’s body without warning, and he seizes the book from Dream’s hands, stands up and hurls it across the cell, falling to the ground in a heap. Dream’s eyes widen, but George doesn’t care.

“ _ Say something! _ ” he screams.

__ For the first time the entire visit, George sees a flash of emotion cross Dream’s face. His mouth is agape, and he looks up at George with raised eyebrows. George knows why. His shoulders are heaving, and his eyes are starting to sting, the way they do every time he gets angry. 

“You fucked up  _ everything  _ and still, for some  _ fucking  _ reason, Sapnap and I still care! We visit you, we still give you the benefit of the doubt even though you don’t deserve it, and you treat us like shit! You want to escape as if you  _ can,  _ like you want to ruin your odds of  _ ever  _ getting out of here! What is  _ wrong  _ with you? Who  _ are  _ you?!”

Dream’s mouth opens, shuts. Then, George barely hears the whisper leave his lips.

“George…”   
George falls to his knees, hugging his arms. He’s an absolute wreck, scrubbing uselessly at his eyes. His entire body feels like glass. 

He just wants to curl up into nothing, sleep, and wake up with things being the way they should be. He wants to build his mushroom house and leave it on weekends so that he can travel to the ends of the earth with his two best friends. He wants Dream to take off his mask when he comes home to him and to wheeze like an old tea kettle when he does something stupid. He wants to walk to the community house and not care who’s there, because whoever is there will be welcome. There’ll be no countries to fight over, no cities to bomb, no people to seek revenge on. George wants and wants and wants  _ so much.  _ He didn’t realize that something so simple could be so out of reach, but here he is, on the floor of his best friend’s prison cell that's shrouded in lava, encapsulated in an inescapable prison meant to keep him from harming anyone else.

But George is here, and he hurts, and he wants so much.

“You said you’d protect me,” his voice cracks. He watches tears fall to the obsidian floor. “But instead you just hurt everyone who you thought you could control. You hurt all of us because you’re selfish.”

George is selfish too. He knows about everything that Dream has done, he knows that Dream is a lost cause, but he’s here anyways, practically begging for him to show a shred of humanity. Dream should be considered beyond saving, beyond the need for sympathy, but George is still kneeling on the floor of his best friend’s cell, and he doesn't back away when he hears Dream kneel down in front of him.

“George,” Dream’s voice is crackly, like he hasn’t spoken in a long time. But his voice is soft and needing, and it's reminiscent of the friend that George used to know, the one who wore his affection on his sleeve. George wipes away his tears and tries to pull himself together, but he can’t bear to look at Dream’s face.

“You were supposed to protect me,” he sighs. Dream scootches forward, and George feels a hand rest against the back of his neck, gently pulling him forward. He looks up as Dream leans in closer and brings their foreheads together.

The gesture is so startling that George almost backs away, but he wills himself to relax. How long has it been since he’s been this close to Dream? How long since they last touched? 

George shuts his eyes and focuses on the sensation of Dream’s breath on his face, trying not to think of his lips, just a couple inches away. The hand that rests on the back of his neck is firm, secure in a way that’s foreign to George these days. He’s here, he’s here with Dream. He wants to go home. He is so filled with want.

“If I could break you out of here, I would,” he whispers. Dream snorts, and the sudden expression causes George to open his eyes to see the faintest smile dancing on Dream’s lips. It’s sweet, almost sickeningly so, like a diamond in a sea of dark coal.

“Sam told me you tried,” he replies, his voice the faintest breath. George can’t help but return the smile.

“I was only joking. I just broke one block, and he threatened to take all my lives.”   
“I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“Yeah? How would you go about doing that?” George asks, almost immediately regretting the bitterness in his tone. Dream doesn’t respond, the precious humor in his expression lost, and the vacant expression that replaces it will haunt George’s dreams. 

The sound of mechanics whirring disrupts their peace, and the lava on the other side of the cell starts to drain.

“I think my time is up,” George murmurs, leaning into Dream’s touch ever so slightly. He doesn’t want to let go.

Silence. Reluctantly, he pulls back and gets to his feet. Looking forlorn, Dream stands too. He doesn’t follow George to the edge of the cell, and doesn’t say a word as the bridge comes floating over the sea of lava.

Goodbye doesn’t seem like the right word. George turns back to him, a tight frown knitted on his face.

“Be good, Dream. Don’t screw yourself over again.”

The gaunt prisoner before him stares and stares, and just as George thinks he’s going to leave empty handed, a great sadness crosses over Dream’s face.

“George,” he says, and George can barely hear him over the sound of the bridge moving. “I don’t hate you.”

The bridge arrives at the cell edge. George understands him. He understands what Dream is trying to say, because he knows Dream, and he knows that not all of him is gone, not all of him is lost. His best friend is still in there somewhere, and he’s trying to tell him the impossible.

George says, “I know,” and moves back across the lava.

**Author's Note:**

> [here's my tweeter](https://twitter.com/arbitersart)   
>  [aaaand my tumblr](https://arbitersart.tumblr.com/)   
>  [aaaand my yewchewbe](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNv59iLAFFlPOec_auWP1uQ)
> 
> come chat w me about the sad block men


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